My Dumbwaiter

I finally got my dumbwaiter working. It took a lot of sanding and fitting, and sanding and fitting, and more sanding and fitting. It probably would have been easier if my plywood pieces had not been so warped.

A real dumbwaiter would have been built in pieces because it would have been 3 floors tall. I built my mini dumbwaiter as one long box built with thin plywood sides and a back. My mini dumbwaiter is designed to slide into a hole from under the house. This way, if there is a problem with the dumbwaiter in the future I can slide the whole thing out and fix the problem and slide it back into the hole.

I built my dumbwaiter like the one in the article and it worked to a point. I found the wheel at the top did not get enough traction to turn the axel at the top, probably because the entire dumbwaiter car was not as heavy as a real dumbwaiter car. I originally tried screen door wheels for my wheels but found them to be too smooth. I found that Lego wheels and Lego parts from a Lego car worked much better and they kept everything nice and square. The counter weights are nuts I found at the hardware store.

I changed my design from the original to be one big string loop that connects the top of the dumbwaiter car up over the top wheel, down the side, under a wheel I added to the bottom, and connects to the bottom of the dumbwaiter. My mini people will be able to pull the string up or down to move the dumbwaiter car.

Another string attaches to the top of the dumbwaiter car over the axel and goes into a hole down the right side into a channel on the side where the counter weights (nuts) can slide up and down. I found the counter weights to be important. It holds the dumbwaiter car in place, otherwise it always falls to the bottom floor. They were a little touchy so I just kept adding weights until I found the counter weights were close in weight of the car.